


Lights Going Dark

by RedMorningWarning



Category: FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Aliens, Angst, Asphyxiation, Character Death, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I just went with what sounded good;;, Keeping a consistent verb tense? Don't know her, Original Character(s), POV Outsider, Suffering, Tragedy, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28642530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedMorningWarning/pseuds/RedMorningWarning
Summary: The last days of an ill-fated ship 'the Noether', and the poor crew aboard it.
Kudos: 3





	Lights Going Dark

**Author's Note:**

> ;;hello and welcome to this weird thing I've been working on and off (mostly off;;) for a few years. Hope you enjoy your stay in this corner of the universe!  
> Again, major warning for kinda graphic asphyxiation, if you're sensitive to that.  
> Take care of yourselves everyone and best wishes!

My name is Ranf and I am a Mantis, with all that entails. Insect body, deadly claws, four legs, terrible mechanic, and a vicious fighter to my very last breath. For all that the Mantis are stereotyped as brutes -pirates, primitives, ever hungry for glory among their people, and for a good reason, I may add- I was different. Perhaps this is why the captain hired me on that middle-of-nowhere asteroid station. Perhaps he saw this, and that I would always honor my contracts, no matter what. Perhaps he understood. 

Or perhaps it was my cheap hire rate that swayed him. 

Only the stars know now.

I was at an ol’ fashioned saloon called DeepBlue when some bright-ass Zoltan -looks male, I thought, but I don’t really get these strict gender divides in other species- sat next to me at the bar and ordered a drink. The near toxic yellow-green glow their race naturally gave off reflected off the chrome countertops and the duraglass bottles behind the human-style bar. I was surprised to see them here in what was practically almost lawless space; usually the Zoltans were too rigid a species to dare come here. They were too stuck to their rules to go out so far -unless it was to ‘pacify’ a region, but that was rare these days, what with the Civil War going on. Nowadays, Zoltans usually stuck to their core systems or assisting with Federation bureaucracy, or what was left of it anyway.

“You are a mercenary, correct?” he asked in somewhat stiff Galactic Common using male speaker grammatical markers, waiting patiently for his drink. He carefully leaned one elbow on the bar and twisted his upper body and head to face me straight on, his two unfamiliar neon eyes searing like stars into my five Mantis ones. 

As a seasoned traveler who had at least tried to learn bits of other cultures -shocking for a Mantis, I know, I know, but I’ve already mentioned I’m a strange one, I didn’t get into enough fights as a larva, as my ClutchMother said despairingly long ago- I knew this was polite in Zoltan culture but the poor fool obviously didn’t remember that it was a challenge in Mantis. He was probably a younger captain, with a smaller ship. More risk and less reward for a contract, most likely.. 

“I noticed your offer on the main dock hiring board.” His speech was formal and technically perfect but he lacked any of the softenings that more practiced speakers liked to employ. His articulation was like a well tailored, but rarely worn, suit; I knew immediately that he was someone who’d had the standard Zoltan training for ship captains to deal with other, less agreeable and law-abiding races, but not much else.

“Yeah, I’m a merc. What’s it to you? You offering?” I sipped my own drink -a glittering pink monstrosity with a slice of some smoked meat from some native animal of a local planet sitting prettily along the rim like a Slug scammer in a nebula. It tasted pretty ok for all that it looked like a fashion disaster. Nothing beat the drinks back from Upata-9Vb45 though. Now _those_ were exquisite, though shame I’ll never get to taste them again. The station was actually disintegrating into the atmosphere of its gas giant last I was there.

“Maybe,” he said. “ Your notice looked fairly old. I am surprised to see a Mantis sitting around for so long for hire. One would think that with the war going on, you would have been hired very quickly. Instantaneously, perhaps, with your stated battle prowess. Business should be booming for you, yet you are here on a small, distant station.”

He hit a little too close to home. It wasn’t _my_ fault my last captain was a coward and traitor. But he didn’t need to know that. I deflected. “Call a zumian a zumian. This station is a piss-ant smack dab in the middle of a nowhere shitfield asteroid belt. And besides, right back at you. What’s a Zoltan hatchling doing so far from home, hmm? And in lawless space, no less. You some kind of rouge, glowstick?”

“Hm. Do not mistake, I am here on a mission and not because I want to,” the captain said, glow flickering slightly from the barbs but ignoring the last question. That was a good sign. He didn’t fold immediately to some pressure or stiffen up completely like a human purrbeast when you rubbed it the wrong way. “I am delivering some packages, but I am not looking for any trouble from either side of the Civil War. I am interested in your contract, but I have some questions, if you do not mind.”

“Sure.” I had some time to kill. And I really wanted to get off this barren rock. Interesting how he said he was delivering something but didn’t say he was a courier. My bet was on some kind of military secrets or reconnaissance data for the Federation, given that he used ‘Civil War’ instead of ‘Revolutionary War’, plus, again, his race.

“Any sides you are taking? Are you Rebel scum or Federalist garbage?” 

I let out a startled hack of pink drink and glitter, spines flaring somewhat over my head. Such language from a Zoltan! Well this was interesting. 

The captain’s drink arrived and he took a sip. It was definitely for those freaky green dudes only: an almost radioactive neon cyan fading to a sulfur yellow color at the top. The glass was completely spherical with the top precisely sliced off, gently hovering like a lightfly in the Zoltan’s ambient energy field as he cradled it above his fleshy palms.

“Does it matter? Whichever side pays me more; I honestly don’t care,” I sighed into my drink -as much as a Mantis could anyway. Mandibles and all, you know? “Rebels seem to me just as bad as the Feds, same pirates only with a new shiny coat of scarlet on their hulls and different victory prizes on their dashboards. If you’re Fed, I don’t care. I’ll keep my silence.” I said that last part more quietly. Call me soft and I’ll rip your limbs off, but even if I wasn’t hired, no need to make it worse for someone I could see was already struggling. There’s a difference between being strong and being an asshole. Tch. 

Honor among thieves, or however that fitting Human proverb went.

The captain hid a muted flinch -got ‘em, so he _is_ a Fed after all, but not like there was much room for doubt- and was silent for a moment as he surreptitiously glanced around the bar, looking for any eavesdroppers. It was pretty empty this time of what passed for night in these parts. It was late enough that most partiers had left by now but too early for the nighttime workers to start pouring in after their graveyard shifts. Only the occasional unlucky spacer was out. 

“How did you know?” he finally asked.

“Oh _come on_. A Zoltan? In the middle of lawless space? Running some so-called ‘packages’?” I spread my side mandibles wide into what passed for a smile for a species with no lips, and added a chittering sound, the Mantis equivalent of a laugh, to show my amusement. Let’s see how well he remembers his ‘Other Species 101’ classes. “I don’t think so. I’ve been out in the lawless long enough to smell when there’s blood in the water, and the Zoltan are one of the founding species of the Federation. Not hard to see the ambush, you feel? So what’s your deal, moonbeam?”

“We need a strong crew to repel boarders. I’ll offer your standard fare plus five scrap to keep your silence about anything you see on board.” Not a bad offer, though by this point I’d take almost anything to get outta here.

“Make it ten scrap and you have a deal.” See keyword: almost.

“Seven.”

“Eight and no less, or I’ll spread around that you’re a Fed.”

“Ch.” The Zoltan grit his ghostly glowing teeth. “Whatever did happen to your statement of not caring? Very well. Eight and your standard fare of twenty seven. Acceptable terms?” Good enough.

“Deal.” And with that, I had sealed my fate.

Oh, if only my ClutchMother and TribeMother could see me now. 

They’d rip off my limbs for getting stuck here in the first place.

\-----

The ship that became my new temporary home was a Type 2-BSD-9S Zoltan Cruiser of waybackwhen yesteryear named the Noether, and the crew, other than me, were all Zoltans. There was Eoin the Captain sitting pretty at the helm, Klain mucking about at the engines, and Yossa, the only female apparently, manning the weapons. Not that I could really tell Zoltan gender apart. Their luminosity hurt my sensitive eyes all the same, and it’s not like they smelt any differently. Just 4 crew; truly the most stripped down skeleton crew possible for a ship.

I was surprised they’d even made it this far considering the shabby state of the ship. They’d obviously tried their best, but there was only so much they could do on their own with not even an Engi or drone RepairBot to help. 

I was ordered to control the doors, placing me near the rear of the ship. It wasn’t too bad a posting, I guess, since having the engines so close made the room very warm. It was actually quite similar to the heat of tropical jungles on Xr’rra’xif -the Mantis home planet where we first evolved. Actually, now that I think about it, that may have been part of the reasoning behind my posting: make me more comfortable and thus less likely to bite off the crew’s heads. I laughed; so transparent, these logical Zoltans. It wasn’t hard to figure them out. I almost felt bad for them -they were so out of their depths on this mission: Chaos and spontaneity ripping into their strictly disciplined and ordered lives, instilled doctrine straining against the pressures of wartime necessities.

As the Noether raced across the sector -apparently having a decent lead over the advancing rebel fleet according to Eoin- I honestly don’t know how we survived as long as we did. The Noether was very clearly a Zoltan leisure ship hastily repurposed for war, making it a tempting target for space pirates and just about every other ne'er-do-well. It had no shields other than the infamous Zoltan Supershield, and it’s weapons were a measly Ion Blaster and a weak Pike Beam. Enough to get through one layer of normal shielding if timed just right, but not much else. While the Supershield amazingly repelled just about anything and everything thrown at it when active, it did have a major weakness: it took too much energy to recharge in the midst of battle, so when it went down it stayed down. That obviously really sucked, and was terribly risky play when your life was on the line. 

I had to give props to the crew, though; they sure did the best they could. The Ion Blaster and Pike Beam had to be timed perfectly by Yossa to deal damage to other ships, but the Beam took a long time to warm up after each shot so by the time we could fire, most of our shielding was gone. Eoin did his best to dodge fire but the ship was old and clunky: It was not made to move so fast or dodge nimbly - its thin civilian hull shook and groaned eerily every time he did a maneuver. We often got hit anyways, despite best efforts. Klain did all he could to keep the old engines functioning; they were our only lifeline if the battle got too dangerous and we needed to escape, after all. And on top, the reactor wasn’t exactly hot shit either, and we needed to rely on the ambient Zoltan energy to get enough power. After practically every battle we had to stop and make repairs to almost every system, crippling the ship as the crew stepped away from their stations and they were depowered. 

Such was the common sad life of an old repurposed civilian ship. No matter how tempting the cheap initial cost of refitting is, in actual combat the ship would be trash and everyone who was anyone in a space dogfight knew it. To get a civvy ship up to par would cost just as much as building a new warship, with more difficulties and less reliability, so at that point might as well just bite the bone and do it right the first time.

Truly, it was a deplorable sight. 

Had I been a normal Mantis, living only for glory and riches and violence, perhaps I would have regretted signing aboard this deathtrap of a clanker. Poor crew, poorer ship, no boarders, and lots of repairs needing to get done, but I signed my contract. I’d go through with it, damn everything and everyone that came our way, myself included. While being an absolute wreck held together only by prayers and omnitape, I did have to admit that those few weeks of constant space battles and following repairs interrupted with some intense firefights were some of the most exhilarating weeks of my life. Nothing quite as energizing to a Mantis like having your life in constant danger. The Zoltans, unfortunately, were the opposite: as the days stretched on with no end to their constant repairs in sight, each battle a little worse, their tell-tale glows dimmed little by little. Slight frowns and stiff shoulders haunted the crew. Eoin tried to keep up morale but it was a losing battle and everyone knew it.

The crew overall, however, while knowing exactly how bad a shape their ship was in, was almost disgustingly earnest. It was surprising for me that they had to be one of the best crews I’d ever been a part of. The captain actually cared for all his subordinates, few as they may be. And in turn, the crew cared for their captain and each other. In what little downtime we ever had during jumps, Yossa set up ‘team bonding’ exercises: trivia hours, light spars, movies; she even got her hands on a copy of the human game ‘scrabble’ -galactic edition playable for all races just to include me too. 

It felt strange, but not entirely unwelcome.

We were about halfway to the beacon that would send us to the next sector when we stopped by a space station above some planet for some fixes that we couldn’t do ourselves -hull repair and such, which required spacesuits and very specific equipment that we didn’t have. While on shore leave for the duration of the repairs, we stopped at a small hole-in-the-wall type eatery to enjoy the brief opportunity to have something other than perfectly nutricional -and perfectly bland no matter what those Zoltans say, yuck!- space mush when Captain Eoin received a message sent over an unsecured broadband in Common to anyone in the vicinity. 

It was from a nearby shop that had an offer for any armed ships that were interested. We needed the scrap so after we had finished eating, Eoin went looking for the source. Since stations in wild space were such dangerous places for the unprepared, I followed him. The signal might have been a trap, after all, and Zoltans are pretty squishy. I had a duty as a bodyguard. Yossa and Klain went back to the ship to oversee the repairs and pay the workers. It was safer over there. Last resort, they could blockade themselves inside the ship, or gun it and leave entirely.

After about half a Zoltan-hour spent tracking down the shop in the very densely packed and chaotically arranged buildings of the station, we finally found Hulth’s Mechanics in a narrow alley, squished in between a blaster shop and another small eatery.

“We heard you had an offer, correct?” the Captain inquired to the hulking Rockman the color of reddish hematite behind the counter as we entered. At almost thrice my height and several heads taller than even Klain, the tallest on our small ship, the Rockman towered over all of us. 

I mentally ran through how to kill this guy if I needed to. Big, strong, and hardy -that was a Rockman. But they were slow. The trick was to, if I could, quickly knock the blaster out of their hands and nimbly dodge any of the heavy kicks and punches that would surely at least dent my carapace. Trip them up and they fell like a sack of rocks which their species so resembled. Then like any species, their neck and joints were major weak points. Pierce the right spot, and they’d bleed out just like anyone else.

“Yes,” the Rockman spoke slowly in their gruff voice - like coarse gravel over a dry rocky river bank - as their race often did. I could never tell gender with Rockmen either; they all look and act so similar. Not even gendered color or size distinctions to rely on. Mantis were much more understandable that way: the more brightly colored and the larger you were, the more female on the spectrum you were. Nice big, simple warning signs for the more aggressive members of a species.

“My usual courier hasn’t shown up. It’s been over a five-day, and I need to get this sent. I fear that on their way back from their previous delivery, they tried to take a shortcut and got themselves killed or enslaved by pirates. The location is just in the next sector over. You interested?”

“You could say that,” Eoin replied. “We are already delivering some packages, but it appears that your stop is in the same direction as our way, and we could certainly make a small detour to get it delivered.”

“How fortunate,” the Rockman stated gravely. “Here is the contract. Look over it. No haggling. See?”

Eoin quickly perused the documents and nodded. Paperwork is a Zoltan’s best friend, and they were masters in contracts almost down to a man. “Acceptable terms.”

The Rockman continued, ”Good. Everything seems set. Payment is half now, half on delivery, non-negotiable. This cred-chip is redeemable for scrap at the sector beacons.” The rockman blinked their dark, deep-set gem eyes languidly. “Materials are in the back. I’ll show you to them and help them get on your ship.”

\-----

The journey to the sector beacon was more of the same: fights we barely survived and constant shoddy repairs. Surprisingly, we survived pretty ok. Not great, we had some very close calls, but we made it. It was in the next sector that trouble began.

It was a rockman controlled sector. Overall the rock clans were split roughly equally between the Rebellion and the Federation. Based on the map that this ancient ship had, plus information gleaned from our rest stops last sector, Eoin determined that this sector in particular was Rebellion leaning. We would have to be more stealthy here when we visit spaceports -or as stealthy as one could be in a Zoltan ship clearly far from home.

Doubly so because Rockman ships were a reflection of their species: they liked their heavy armor and they liked their beefy missiles. Yossa said we absolutely needed to get to a shop as soon as we could to buy whatever better weaponry we could afford, as our current weapons would not cut it soon, and everyone knew this to be true. Our shield would be next to useless here, and we didn’t have the scrap for an upgrade, so a good offense would have to be our defense.

The first few skirmishes we got into in this new sector proved her right: we could barely scratch them! We survived only by the smiling of BroodMother Luck along with running when things got dire. 

It really itched under my plates that I could do so little to assure victory. We had no teleporters or mind control stations or anything. Not once in my service here so far had we been boarded, so I guess all their boarding troubles had disappeared once I stepped aboard. Hilarious, in a dark way, but frustrating. All I could do in most enemy encounters was to help repair damage, which was a pretty awkward task for me. My sharp claws were definitely not built to hold the small, delicate tools necessary for repairs -there was definitely a reason why many, if not most, Mantis ships kept a slave Engi (or at least someone of another race) on board- but I made do. It was better than pulling one of the Zoltans away from their critical stations. We straight up didn’t have the reactor power needed to keep stuff running without the crew’s ambient energy.

When we finally got to a station with a weapons shop -while waiting for hull repairs again, as expected- Yossa went with Klain to check it out. I stayed with Eoin, teaching him some finer points on how to deal with rock boarders lest any teleport into the navigation room. 

They came back to us soon after with tension in their postures. Klain’s ambient energy field was almost sparking. Things had clearly gone less than optimally. Yossa shook her head gently at Eoin, glow dimming. “This shop had only weapons which were too weak or too expensive for us. We will have to try the next station.”

Eoin also gained some irregularities in their glow while I shifted my plates and scales somewhat. They weren’t happy about the situation, and neither was I. We just barely made it to this station anyway. Most of our scrap had to go to hull repairs. We couldn’t keep this up. The next store open to us was likely to be across the sector, past more enemies. We attracted a lot of unwanted attention and scavengers in our clunker Zoltan ex-civilian ship as-is.

At some point we just wouldn’t have enough scrap for repairs or fuel and would get stranded or blown into smithereens. Most likely sooner rather than later, and the whole crew could feel it. I still didn’t know what exactly the important package we were transporting even _was_ or where we were really going other than generally ‘to the Federation’, but I could tell we still had a long while to go and that the Zoltans considered failure not being an option, so we pushed on.

Looking back, I should have left the crew at that point. I should have taken my bag o’ possessions and absconded, my contract and honor be damned, blast it!

But back then, I couldn’t. I can’t explain why, but I just couldn’t. I was in too deep to back out now, and the crew were like big eyed nymphs. It would be another regret to gnaw away at me forever had I left them to die, not while I could do something, anything, to help even just a little bit.

It was a bit like watching a ship collision: horrible and despairing, plasma burning, oxygen blasting into the void, but you just can’t look away. It would’ve been more funny if it wasn’t happening to _us_ but rather some other poor folks, told in an accendote in a bar somewhere in the universe.

\-----

This is how the end days finally went down:

A few jumps after the unlucky shopping session, BroodMother Luck stopped gracing us with her presence. Another day, another rock cruiser, but this time a few too many hits we didn’t manage to dodge and we were dead in the water.

Shields, or what little we managed to upgrade them to? Hit.

Weapons? Hit.

Engines? Hit.

Doors? Hit.

The fight was a chaotic clusterfuck, more so than usual. Yossa worked overtime to line up our shoddy weapons, on top of everyone frantically patching systems -both the retrofitted and the not- and hull breaches. Have I mentioned how much I learned to hate hull breach missiles? Well I sure do now! We finally blew them up a la death by a thousand bugbites but…

They managed to hit our oxygen system. 

Without that, no matter how much oxygen we had in reserves, we couldn’t actually use any of it to turn into air so we could breathe. Combined with the previous uncontrolled venting from breaches and controlled venting from the macgyvered fire suppressant -“Fire can’t burn if there’s no air!” called out Captain Eoin, tapping his head, cutting necessary corners with so few hands to go around and time being the essence in a fight-, plus the time between being hit, the battle ending so we can finally spare someone to fix it, and actually noticing it was malfunctioning… well.

Oxygen was just yet another thing we were running critically low on. 

Eoin and Klain were first on the scene since the room was so small that it could only fit 2 of the crew at a time and they were at full health back then. Their glows were flickering near blindingly light in their panic, like some kind of discount disco balls. To make matters worse, there was a hull breach inside the oxygen room too, suffocating them while they were working. Meanwhile Me and Yossa were being patched up in the medbay, already starting to suffer some effects of lowered oxygen. 

Who decided the medbay and oxygen rooms should be so damn far away from each other, by the way? I get that critical systems should be spaced out to prevent any one attack cripping the ship, especially beam weapons, but if oxygen is gone and the medbay is the only thing keeping you alive, then surely you should put them near each other!

We worked in shifts as best we could, swapping out from oxygen to medbay and back whenever anyone’s health dipped too low -an unfortunately common problem with these squishy Zoltans. It required absolutely perfect timing, since at least one person needed to be working on repairs, else the precious work we were doing would collapse back in on itself and we’d have to start all over again. The only bright side -heh- was that we didn’t have to worry about lights. Obviously we had to turn off the electricity in the room so we don’t shock ourselves while handling the wires, but Yossa gave off enough strong ambient illumination for us to work fine.

Turns out, this is really hard even under less dire circumstances. Shocker, shocker, but the chances of succeeding in a life or death struggle are not improved by massive stress and oxygen deprivation. Who woulda thought, right?

Anyway, we kinda blew it, both figuratively and literally. One mistimed switch later, and Klain’s body exploded in a wash of energy and radiation, scorching the walls, giving off a small EMP, undoing all the repair progress made, and the backlash accidentally triggering nearby almost-dead Eoin to go full kaput too. The only silver lining was that he was in a corridor and not a systems room else more shit would’ve broke.

And so there were two.

Yossa and I looked at each other in the medbay, two vibrant green eyes into my five -two compound and three simple. We had both felt the double ion explosions of their deaths in our skeletons -whether internal bones like Yossa or external carapace like your’s truly-, and with them, the crushing despair of knowing how this will likely end. Either we’d now die extremely slowly from lack of food, water, air, and bordom in this medbay as it tried its best to keep us alive until the reactors ran out, or we’d die less slowly from eventually being found by the rebels as they caught us, or we’d die fast choking on our own respiratory systems as we continued to try to fix the oxygen, with only the faintest hope that we make it. In any case, extreme agony guaranteed.

“In case we do not make it, it was an honor serving with you, Ranf.” Yossa stated in the almost zen-like state achieved by unimaginable amounts of stress. “May captain Eoin and crewmate Klain be united safely with The Unity.”

“You too, Yossa. An honor.” I chittered out past the lump in my throat. “Don’t think I ever really mentioned it, but, um, I appreciated all the work you did for those team bonding times. ‘Twas kinda fun.”

Yossa smiled with grief growing voraciously in the shadow of her eyes. “I’m glad.” 

We broke eye contact, each turning back to look at the medbay door.

Well, when faced with such dire options and with our backs to the wall, there’s nothing left but to go for it. One last hail mary to fix the system and skedaddle this shitty, poorly optimized, sitting duck ship out of this cursed rock sector. I regretted us ever taking that contract, no matter how badly we were hurting for scrap at the time.

And we were so close! Yossa and I put the finishing touches on the repair, power rerouted, and all done! Now to run to the medbay and-

Yossa’s fragile body couldn’t hold out. Her lungs gave one last struggle for air that wasn’t yet there, failed, and she blew up. It caught me in the face, scorching my carapace and blinding my eyes before stunning my front legs and turning them useless, just as I scrambled right behind her in the corridors.

And so I was alone.

Even with my front limbs limp, animalistic desperation lunged me the rest of the way into the medbay. I laid there collapsed, healing up and slowly ceasing to suffocate as the oxygen systems worked overtime to refill the ship.

We were so close.

So close, so far, and at what cost.

\-----

With the oxygen fixed, I had given myself a well deserved rest -sweet sweet air oh how I’ve missed you- and despair session before I mechanically managed to move on to fixing the other holes in this dinosaur relic.

And, oh, how many there were.

After all were patched, I put the engines and weapons on auto while I sat in Captain Eoin’s unsurprisingly comfy chair at navigation. He spends - _spent_ , shit- lots of time here, so might as well make it as tolerable as he could, right? There were his old used mugs --by mugs I mean Zoltan style mugs, obviously, so basically geometric shapes with one open side to drink from. Eoin seemed to favour pyramidal geometries himself judging by their abundance.- still laying disheveled around the dash, long since cold and empty of the Zoltan-energy boosting drink they had contained and long since having fallen out of Eoin’s personal field. There was a small looping hologif in one corner, of a beautiful sunset shimmering in reds and golds over a beach of some exotic world, complete with a neon green ocean of something and dual moons winking off to the side from the main event. 

...

It was too quiet.

I was used to crew dying off, to the tense and violent silence between equally violent raids, but... 

It was too quiet.

Not the right kind of quiet.

...

There weren't even bodies left to ritualistically say farewell to and send to The BeyondMother, or to that whatever The Unity Zoltan equivalent was. There was nothing left to mark them except for the few personal or team-shared belongings they left behind.

Damn Zoltans.

...

I checked out the map for where to jump to next, and I couldn’t help but notice a marked end destination far ahead. Isn’t that star system rumoured to be one of the last, strongest bastions of the Federation?

Well once I was over with this courier mission since we... _I_ still needed that scrap, I guessed that’s where I’d go.

...

I checked the captain’s logs as I was waiting during jump times -it’s so so _so_ boring going on a space jump alone, noone to talk to or play cards with or anything else- and Eoin obviously did everything to the letter and kept regular recordings and reports, even if he didn’t have anyone to send them to for review. This may not exactly be an official Fed ship, but he sure did his best to treat it as one. Easier to stick to routines for comfort in the face of terror, and all that, I guess.

Back to the point though: hot damn, Eoin and crew, what the hell? Talk about a last desperate gamble! If this rebel flagship is as big a deal as its schematic specs, then no kidding taking it down is priority number one!

If it was destroyed, this could change the tide of the war and...

Well actually, why do I care? I didn’t particularly care for either side, and besides, I didn’t just scrape by death by a scale just to lunge back into it’s maw!

I didn’t care, I didn’t, I didn’t!

...

Oh but I did. 

I had a contract with the crew. I couldn’t let them die for nothing. And not to mention, it’s not like I had anywhere else to go anyways.

Well technically I could just go, leave this all behind, but... 

...

Well, I’m a very strange Mantis.

...

\-----

I got the outpost just fine afterwards. Somehow the galaxies aligned or some other harmony bullshit, and not even a single enemy interrupted me. They got the supplies, and I got the scrap. It was just enough to do some hull repairs next time I stopped by a beacon with a shop. 

When the customers heard what happened to the rest of the crew -the Rockmen here were expecting a calm Eoin-the-Zoltan, so what a rude and suspicious awakening was a skitty Rafn-the-Mantis- they gave me a Combat I drone as extra. It was all they could spare, even though there’s no way a civilian-looking ship like the Noether has a drone bay and indeed we didn’t. If we’d had some sys-repair bots or a supershield booster drone or literally anything to boost out combat efficiency then maybe this shitshow wouldn’t have gone down so bad. 

Well, time to get going, I guessed as I headed back abord.

Eoin, Klain, Yossa... I’ll do my best. No guarantees though.

\-----

That fickle BroodMother Luck had obviously left my side again soon after I left that outpost. I wasn’t yet even out of the sector before a rock pirate took one look at this rusting deathtrap tourist boat and knew I was easy prey. Their purple splashed segmented ship wormed its way closer and closer.

If we had just barely made it out of a fight earlier with a pirate just like this one, sustaining heavy damage and most of the crew ending up dead, well, there was obviously no way I on my own could win this. I gunned the emergency FTL drive as fast I could to try and warp out of there, but it takes some time for the old reactor to gather up the massive amount of energy needed to warp again. In the meantime, I had to dodge as many hits as I could, with the navi wheel gripped tight in my claws and the poor auto-pilot evasion subsystem doing what it could to help. 

At this point, I had so little hull left that a stiff solar breeze could’ve probably fried a critical hole in this thing and tear it into pieces. An unfortunate pebble sized asteroid flying the wrong way into an exhaust pipe could cause a reactor meltdown. Oh, how I wished for a proper warship or pirating ship instead of this fossil of yesteryear.

By the way, have I mentioned that on my own, I didn’t have enough power for this ship? It was meant to be used with Zoltan crews and it really showed. Damn cheap bastards. I get why, but damn if it doesn’t burn like acid spit in a wound.

Too bad I’m such a shit pilot. These pirates knew what they were doing. As soon as the supershield went down under their barrage of missiles, they targeted and hit the oxygen systems.

Time for panicked oxygen repair part two: electric boogaloo.

This time I kept a real close eye for any systems damage notifications on Eoin’s dash while I abysmally tried to maneuver the clunky ship, and noticed immediately when it went down. I leapt out of my chair and scrambled as fast as I could before the oxygen levels got too low but it was no use. Turns out there was a hull breach in the room. It feels like there’s always a hull breach.

By the time I got that fixed, there was no air in the system room. The pirates had hit doors too and fires were starting around the ship. Plus, without Yossa or another Zoltan, there was much less light to go around and I wasn’t super great at fumbling with an old Zoltan-regulation flashlight in my manibles while my claws handled these tiny, precise tools.

Sad to say but, unsurprisingly, I couldn’t fix the oxygen in time. I held my breath as long I could but…

Grasp wrench-

-Can’t breathe-

Turn wrench-

-No air can’t breathe-

-When did these dark spots appear?

Grab the wires, carefully, carefully-

Yossa would be so much better at this where is she Yossa Klain Eoin I’m sorry about that time I cheated at-

-can’t breathe-

are wires supposed to look that way look like strings like meat hungry can’t breathe can’t breathe

-guts of a kill my hunt its red strip it quickly-

wait no those are wires shit they’re cut up I cut them up Eoin Klain Yossa Eoin i’m sorry i couldn’t finish the mission the federation is-

- _cant_

_br_

_ea_

_the_

-


End file.
